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POLYMER MEMORY

ABSTRACT
1.INTRODUCTION Imagine a time when your mobile will be your virtual assistant and will need far more than the 8k and 16k memory that it has today, or a world where laptops require gigabytes of memory because of the impact of convergence on the very nature of computing. How much space would your laptop need to carry all that memory capacity Not much, if Intel's project with Thin Film Electronics ASA (TFE) of Sweden works according to plan. TFE's idea is to use polymer memory modules rather than silicon-based memory modules, and what's more it's going to use architecture that is quite different from silicon-based modules. While microchip makers continue to wring more and more from silicon, the most dramatic improvements in the electronics industry could come from an entirely different material plastic. Labs around the world are working on integrated circuits, displays for handheld devices and even solar cells that rely on electrically conducting polymersâ€not siliconâ€for cheap and flexible electronic components. Now two of the worldâ„¢s leading chip makers are racing to develop new stock for this plastic microelectronic arsenal: polymer memory. Advanced Micro Devices of Sunnyvale, CA, is working with Coatue, a startup in Woburn, MA, to develop chips that store data in polymers rather than silicon. The technology, according to Coatue CEO Andrew Perlman, could lead to a cheaper and denser alternative to flash memory chipsâ€the type of memory used in digital cameras and MP3 players. Meanwhile, Intel is collaborating with Thin Film Technologies in Linkping, Sweden, on a similar high capacity polymer memory. 2.PRESENT MEMORY TECHNOLOGY SCENARIO: Digital Memory is and has been a close comrade of each and every technical advancement in Information Technology. The current memory technologies have a lot of limitations. DRAM is volatile and difficult to integrate. RAM is high cost and volatile. Flash has slower writes and lesser number of write/erase cycles compared to others. These memory technologies when needed to expand will allow expansion only two dimensional space. Hence area required will be increased. They will not allow stacking of one memory chip over the other. Also the storage capacities are not enough to fulfill the exponentially increasing need. Hence industry is searching for Holy Grail future memory technologies for portable devices such as cell phones, mobile PCâ„¢s etc. Next generation memories are trying a tradeoffs between size and cost .This make them good possibilities for development.

easy to integrate with other CMOS 6. or the positively-charged holes vacated by electrons. and making sure the information remains stable. Intel. These charges come either from electrons. Application of an electric field to a cell lowers the polymers resistance. Polymer memory stores information in an entirely different manner than silicon devices. and the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk.FEATURES OF POLYMER MEMORY 1. thus increasing its ability to conduct current. NEXT GENERATION MEMORIES As mentioned earlier microchip makers continue to wring more and more from silicon. large number of memory technologies were emerged. The most important one among them is their ability to support expansion in three dimensional spaces.Memory is Nonvolatile 4. They include MRAM. Next Generation Memories satisfy all of the good attributes of memory. a voltage is applied between the top and bottom electrodes. Microsecond initial reads. and conveniently check the presence of the space charges to know the state of the polymer layer. Coatue fabricates each memory cell as a polymer sandwiched between two electrodes. devising a relatively convenient way to retrieve these binary patterns from storage. It is mainly because of their expansion capability in three dimensional spaces. These memory technologies are referred as ËœNext Generation Memoriesâ„¢.3. Using technology licensed from the University of California. The following graph also emphasis acceptance of Polymer memory. 4.Operational temperature between -40 and 110Ã‚Â°C. We can store space charges in a polymer layer. Rather than encoding zeroes and ones as the amount of charge stored in a cell. Space charges are essentially differences in electrical charge in a given region. The different conductivity States represent bits of information. or electrical current. To activate this cell structure.
. modifying the organic material. Polymer memory is the leading technology among them. Data stored by changing the polarization of the polymer between metal lines. running across the surface. Polymer Memory and Ovonics Unified Memory.Zero transistors per bit of storage 3. 6.How does Polymer Memory work Making a digital memory device means finding a way to represent the ones and zeros of computer logic. Different voltage polarities are used to write and read the cells.No cell standby power or refresh required 7. Write speed faster than NAND and NOR Flash. FeRAM. is also the largest maker of flash-memory chips is trying to combine the processing features and space requirements feature and several next generation memories are being studied in this perspective. 5. the biggest maker of computer processors.Simple processing. Los Angeles. the polymer maintains its state until a field of opposite polarity is applied to raise its resistance back to its original level. A polymer retains space charges near a metal interface when there is a bias. which are negatively charged. 2. Coatues chips store data based on the polymers electrical resistance.